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Escape game 'Hyde' uses biosensors to test survival instincts

Escaping the sinister testing labs of Aperture Science is all good fun in the Portal games, but how well do you think you'd fare if you were the actual guinea pig in a twisted experiment? That's the question currently being posed by Hyde, a planned attraction that aims to combine bio-sensing wearable tech with a nerve-wracking escape experience.

Billing itself as "the world's first bio-activated maze game", Hyde is designed by Slingshot Effect, the makers of zombie experience 2.8 Hours Later. Inspired by classic yarn The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but given a modern twist, players will find themselves involved in a drug trial organised by the Jekyll Corporation, testing a concoction designed to modify the human body and allow control of your surroundings by your physical state.

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The test -- and the game -- involve navigating a smart maze, using your new "powers" and the associated tech to navigate and solve increasingly challenging puzzles. All the while, the truth behind the experiments unfolds through environmental storytelling, and it becomes clear someone is watching....

Hyde is set to be a very different experience to 2.8 Hours Later, which sees players running around abandoned spaces in cities across the UK trying to find sanctuary from the undead. "This is a single site, technology driven experience. The pleasure here is not so much bundling around night-time streets with a gang of friends, but a more intimate experience underpinned by a very private horror," Slingshot Effect's Simon Johnson tells WIRED.co.uk. "You'll play with a small group of friends and encounter other groups in the maze occasionally, but there will be a powerful connection between you personally and the machinery of Hyde. It will be each individual against the system. Sometimes collaboration will help, sometimes not."

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Key to the development of Hyde was the introduction of wearable bio-sensing technology, allowing for a very different approach to the real-world gaming space. Even playing in teams, it opens the door to a unique individual experience, as each player's responses are monitored with no potential for the organic equivalent of card-clash. "Bio-sensing technology is intimate. A wearable device is something that monitors you via direct contact with you. It reveals a layer of information that no swipe card ever could," says Johnson. "The wearables we are using are designed specifically for simultaneously use by teams of people in close contact. On top of this we calibrate our experience to you as an individual, training our system to recognise what it looks like when you hold your breath, or when your heart rate is raised. This way we can make sure that we can track the changes in your physiological state, and use those to make changes in your environment. This is the crux of Hyde."

Slingshot is currently crowdfunding Hyde on Kickstarter, with plans to launch in London and eventually expand to New York. Although it's currently around £38,000 short of its £50k goal with just over two days left to run, Johnson believes the project will come to fruition and is investigating other funding options. "The funds we're looking to raise are part of a larger funding strategy including private investment and development funding form the React scheme. While it will leaves a dent in our plans, it will by no means derail them," Johnson says. "We want to develop a community of interest around Hyde. We come from a background of open design and co-design [and] believe in getting as many opinions on the table as we can. For us, the main focus of the Kickstarter was about the outreach to start this community [and] will be working with this growing community to make sure we deliver something truly special in Hyde."

Failing a last minute surge in backers, Slingshot Effect plans to go the video game route for Hyde and release a "beta" version. Called The Black Maze, it will be "a game that goes some way to achieving our aims with Hyde but that we can achieve in a shorter timeframe, a more immediate offer." "The Black Maze is simple, it asks you: can you find your way in the dark? Can you stop your heart racing?" Johnson explains. "We will measure your heart rate. We will start the game by giving you the time it takes for your heart to beat 1000 times. We will then send you in to the maze, into the darkness. How far you get is up to you. With each beat of your heart your time diminishes. The more your heart races the faster your time goes down. If we are going to make Hyde a maze that responds to your fear, we will need to spend some time learning what you're afraid of the most."

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Somewhere between haunted house and escape game, then, with challenges hidden in the gloom expressly designed to get your heart beating and chip away at your time. Tests of nerve may include listening for sounds of threats, or crossing a narrow bridge while effectively blind, or crawling through a "fetid tunnel" in order to progress. When experiential gaming relies so heavily on getting the heart rate pumping, the idea of a new type of game that forces you to remain placid, undaunted, is an interesting concept.

It also allows Johnson and his team to trial the concepts and technology they hope to use in Hyde, whether it succeeds in its crowdfunding or is delayed until later. "Best of all is that The Black Maze is something we can deliver now," Johnson says. "So we are going to release The Black Maze to the public this year."

Both Hyde and The Black Maze -- and indeed 2.8 Hours Later before them -- are examples of the increasing numbers of hybrid experiences that sit somewhere between theatre and gaming, and turn attendees into both audience and participants. Playwright Mike Bartlett's Game explored a first person experience at London's Almeida Theatre, and even established video games such as Battlefield: Hardline have launched live versions. Even though the likes of Secret Cinema attract criticism as much as they do crowds, it's a field Johnson thinks is expanded, and warrants exploration. "There are a lot of opportunities now for people to have immersive experiences. This 'experience economy' looks set to continue to grow and develop over the coming years," he says. "The thing that separates our games from a lot of the current offering is that we take an audience's agency as being primary. If you like, we think that a lot of experiences aren't interactive enough. Our experiences are are structured as games in order to make the interactive part of them both explicit and meaningful. Hyde will be a great example of this integration of narrative and experience."